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It's been a good two weeks since I've PickleToothpasted, but I am determined not to abandon this poor little lonely blog.  My calc final happened.  My mom coming into town happened.  Now things are settling back down and I am officially in vacation mode.  Vacation mode being; make plenty of well intentioned plans to go out and do things around town on my own for quality alone time and then end up hanging out at home and puttering around.  So I will putter, and I will enjoy it.  Cuz puttering is one of thet things I like to do best, as long as I don't do too much of it.  So here are some of the things I have been thinking about or occupied with of late.

The south beach thing. 
I'm still doing it.  I've had some intentional "treat days" where I've eaten what I've wanted and I've had some unintentional fall-backs where I've eaten what was available or convenient, but overall, I'm still going pretty strong.  Initial water based weight loss seemed to have leveled out a little over a week ago.  So now I'm on to slower weight/fat loss.  Which is fine.  I miss the drama of dropping 5 lbs in a couple of days, but I'm smart enough and to know that that's unrealistic for a longer period of time.  Bouncing around on and off the plan more than I intended for the last week has kinda slowed things down a bit, but I am still determined and hopeful.  I found a great blog, Kalyn's Kitchen, that has lots of great South Beachy recipes that I can draw inspiration from.  I think that my current weakness is blue cheese.  I'm not supposed to eat it, cuz it's super high in fat, but I have been anyways.  Think it's time to stop that.  I should really make some killer tarragon vinagrette dressing and lay off the blue cheese.

Personal Finance Adventure For the Win!
I'm coming to terms with the notion that personal finances are something that have to be monitored, recorded and analyzed if we want to make any progress toward saving money and improving credit for buying a house.  And, I have also been coming to terms with the fact that it's gonna be me who does this, and really, I should just ask for Marshall's cooperation rather than participation in this matter.  So, I've signed up with Mint, an online personal finance program that can track and categorize spending.   As long as it's done with a card or check.  I haven't really found a way to enter cash transactions in a terribly easy way.  There are a lot of features that I wish mint did better, but as a start, it's better than nothing and I haven't found anything I like better so far. 

Last night was date night at our house.  We were supposed to go to a baseball game, but due to incredible tiredness factors occurring around 6 p.m. last night, that didn't happen.  So we ended up at the old watering hole.  I was gonna order a glass of wine and abstain from eating there.  But the wine there is crappy.  And I decided when I came back to the SB thing that I wasn't gonna be puritanical about it.  Otherwise I'd get frustrated and quit and start eating crap I shouldn't eat all the time.  Treating myself once a week was the plan.  So, I had beer and chicken strips and fries and had a great date with Marshall.  And I'm not sorry.  At least not very sorry.  I was hoping to treat myself to sushi this weekend, and maybe I will.  Maybe I won't.  But this morning I'm back on track.  Feel a little beer-y and bloaty, which is a good reminder as any as to why I want to keep eating the way I have over the last week (minus last night). So yeah.  And another thing.  I think I've settled on 175 as my goal weight.  Today I weighed in at 259 (bloaty).  So I have less than 100 pounds to lose.  I'm looking at 84 pounds.  Not formidable at all. I'll be curious to see what kind of weight loss pattern develops over the next few weeks.  Will a lose a pound a week?  Sometimes 2?  If I lose 1 and a half pounds per week, that would put me at my idea weight in a little over a year.  But there'll probably be some setbacks along the way.  So maybe it's more realistic to say a year and a half?  I dunno.  I suppose I shouldn't obsess about the "schedule" too much.  But it's nice to not feel totally daunted by the goals.  I can do it.  

This morning I had breakfast with an old friend of mine.  One of my oldest friends really, we met in high school and have had intermittent but intense contact ever since.  When we're close, we're really close.  We are able to empathize and understand each other in incredible ways and conversation can be awesome and inspiring.  However, there have been times when he has been incredibly and I mean incredibly arrogant and hard to deal with.  I pretty much wrote him off about three and a half years ago, after telling him to humble himself down and be a decent person or I didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore.  He swore up and down that he had seen how his behavior basically sucked and that he would be a better friend, but I basically didn't see him after that conversation.  He's also been my rock in the past.  When I was falling apart, he let me live look to him and cling to him for support and perspective.  He even put up with the probably terribly obvious but misplaced crush I developed on him, cuz he was, you know, superman.  It's been two years since I've seen him, and today we were able to come together with genuine love and care for each other and begin to reestablish a powerful friendship.  We've both  been through a lot since we've seen each other, done a bit of the old growing up and life-stuff.  I'm more confident than ever and he seems to be more humble, in a non-forced kind of way.  And not down on himself, but calmer and probably actually more self-assured, when it comes down to it.  Not so much like he has something to prove.  He's still super awesome, and I still super admire him.  But for the first time ever, I feel like his equal.  Something I probably always was, but just didn't see.  

Ikea can kiss my butt
Last night Marshall and I adventured out into the wilds of NE Portland.  Our destinaton: Ikea.  I had never been to an Ikea superstore, and I was so beguiled by the catalogs and the talk of cheap stylish stuff.  My mom swears that the bunk beds my sister and I had had kids are Ikea, but they were purchased back when Ikea was just another Scandinavian housewares company whose goods you could find in a few boutique shops here and there.  Well, my nieces now own that bunkbed, and it's still doing quite well.  But let me tell you, NONE of that cheap plastic crap they are selling at the 'showroom and warehouse' I went to last night could POSSIBLY still hold up after 23 years.  The showrooms were cute, I admit, and for the first 45 minutes of weaving around an air-hangar of tiny little fake living rooms, offices and bedrooms I was charmed.  But after 45 minutes, when I still hadn't reached the end of the candy-land style arrows painted on the floor, I was thoroughly disillusioned.  It's cheap crap made with cheap materials that seem to be put together lego style.  So now I've been.  I've had that experience, as I don't think I'll need to repeat it. 

Progress Report
The SB eating has been going swimmingly.  I know it's mostly or possibly all water weight, but I now weigh 13 pounds less than I did when I started the whole process.  Very soon, the weight loss should slow down to 1-2 pounds a week or so.  I look forward to that, cuz it'll mean that it's definitely body fat I'm losing.  And my goal?  I don't want to be uber thin or anything.  But if I were able to comfortably wear size 14 or 16 pants, I think I would be quite happy with myself at that size. 

Housey Stuff
Lately I've been thinking about mlittle things I can do to improve my quality of life.  Specifically, things that could make home a more fulfilling and comfortable place to be.  As much as I tend to avoid housework for all of its womens-work baggage, I've realized that I really and truly appreciate living in a tidy environment.  And since Marshall is generally quite happy to do his fair share of the housework, I want to work on doing little things around the house to keep it tidy more routine and less "holy shit this place is trashed, we'd better spend all day Sunday making it livable again." 

So in terms of cleaning the main areas needing regular attention are:

• The kitchen.  Cleaning up after preparing meals, keeping the dishwasher unload/reload cycle moving and washing the pans that pile up in the sink
• Laundry.  I can't remember when I didn't live out of laundry baskets that were overflowing with a mix of clean, dirty, and could-be-worn-again clothes.  I've never really liked doing or putting away laundry, but it sure is nice to be able to a) find clothes, b) walk through the bedroom and c) not have to do a million loads at a time to catch up. 
  
• The living room.  The newspapers pile up on the couch, next to the chair and on the coffee table.  Mail and books and magazines end up scattered and piled up on the coffee table.  It just gets obnoxious.  Mail alone is a huge issue.  Recycle the junk mail right away and make a designated place for important crap and put it there.  How hard can it be?

So these are the things I want to get better about in terms of cleaning.  Just incorporate them into daily life, a few minutes here, and few minutes there and the house won't be trashed. 

Lifey Stuff
I like to do stuff and make stuff.  The other day I bought an icosahedron building kit and had a blast.  It was simple and fun and made my fingers hurt.  But it's pretty rare that I actually do or make anything.  I think part of it is not having a place where I can set up and leave stuff like art supplies out and not have it be in the way or in danger of getting sat on by a cat.  I want to find some projects and find a place to do them.  I don't care if I start out with jigsaw puzzles.  So here are some ideas I have for myself.

• Set up a studio space in the basement.  Kind of a big deal to get this rolling since the basement is full of stuff and crap and boxes and shit, but it would be cool.  As long as I can make it comfortable and not scary feeling.
• Take knitting back up.  Find a pattern, maybe spend some time at the knitting store learning some new techniques and make some stuff.  I've always wanted to knit socks.  I think the time may be near.  So step one would be go the the knitting store and say "hi there, it's been a while since I've knit anything and I want to knit some simple socks.  Could you recommend a pattern to me that is relatively simple?"
  
• Do yoga again.  I fight with this one all the time.  When I do it I love it and it feels great and I feel way awesomely better.  But I gotta do it.  Disciplined I am not.  Baby step?  Find my yoga books
  
• Finish unpacking/putting together the house.  It may be more appropriate to put this under housey stuff, bout oh well.  I mean for crying out loud, we've lived here for two months now and the bookcase in the dining room still just has boxes in it.  And they're not even books. 
  

I still marvel at the fact that I have dogs.

Marshall came home from Seattle at three o'clock this morning/last night after a two night stint at a conference.  While he was gone I managed to watch obscene amounts of Gilmore Girls, do a fair amount of laundry, sweep of incredible masses of dog hair and hang out with my neighbor.  And, I cooked for myself, which was awesome.  I had a lovely london broil on Thursday night and made eggs and turkey bacon for breakfast Saturday.  Yummmmm.  I managed to eat South Beach style all weekend....more or less.  I found a sugar free, low-fat ice cream at Safeway, but definitely ate too much of it.  Oh well.  Large amounts of diet Hansens soda was also consumed.  And I had a couple of beers last night, which is definitely not on the plan.  Nonetheless, I still managed to drop some weight over the weekend.  Granted, it's mostly or perhaps all water weight, but that's fine with me.  Still feels like progress and still indicates that I am on the right track.

Needless to say, I am very thankful to have Marshall back at home.  I managed to not be too bored or upset by his absence, but nothing compares to his snoogles and companionship.  We think that the barometric pressure went all topsy-turvy today, cuz both of us were feeling air-headed and funky all day.  We did manage to take the puppers out to the mall today to exchange my phone (again...this is the second time the browser quit working) and exchange a shower head for a toaster oven.  And, before we left we also hung out in bed and ordered prints of photos from our trip to Oceanside to put in our engagement/wedding/marriage book. 

Tomorrow's gonna be a calculus study group day.  Bao, Hanna and I were all thoroughly confused doing the last lab, so we're gonna get together to try to figure some things out. 

That's all I got for now.  Still feeling a little off and quite inarticulate.  Marshall and I are gonna watch the Muppets Take Manhattan tonight.  I picked it up at Safeway while he's gone.  It's got the "Somebody's Getting Married" song we're gonna use to gather folks together for our wedding. 

So how much blogging is just plain obsessive?  With classes winding down I've got a fair amount of time on my hands, and I want to be doing something.  Since being in ceramics classes, I've rediscovered the joys of creating something; active participation.  So, since I don't have a home studio, I want to blog all the time right now.  If I were keeping a traditional journal with a pen and a bound book, I don't think I'd feel self conscious.  And really, that's what this is for.  This blog is for me.  Other people might read it.  Might.  If I tell them about it, that is, but when it comes down to it this is a journal. I wholeheartedly believe that blogging is a legitimate form of journalism, that can be done thoughtfully and with integrity, either to inform or entertain.  But this ain't it.  This is just my blog, and I can write in it 17 times a day if I want to.  I can obsess about the food I eat, I can talk about the books I read, my nightmares, and how bummed I am that my new shoes don't fit (they don't).  The grammar can be clunky and the typos can stay exactly where they are.  And that's fine by me. 

I should leave the house soon.  I gotta take the bus to calculus, which starts at 6 p.m.  Usually I'm totally into going to class, but today I have an ibuprofen-proof headache and I'm gonna get the results back from my last exam, which I made some dumb mistakes on.  I want to hang out at home and watch too many episodes of the Gilmore Girls and look for recipes on the internet.  I want to watch Karate Kid on Hulu.com.  I want to sit on the back steps and talk to Candace.  I want to take a nap.  My attention span is short.  I better make some tea and get my butt in gear.

I dug the bathroom scale out of the basement this morning.  I was pretty scared to find out how much of my work from last year I had "undone" - and how much extra I'd added to the work that needed to be done now.  Well, unless the scale is calibrated funky, I gained back most, but not all, of the weight I lost last year.  Which is a small victory in itself, in a way.  So I'm starting out at 268.  I can work with that.  I know to many people that may seem like a horrifying number.  But honestly, a lot of the time it doesn't freak me out that much.  After avoiding scales like dead animals on the side of the road for most of my life, weighing in every couple of days last year and actually seeing progress has changed my relationship with the numerical value of my weight.  I used to dread anyone finding out how much I weigh, because it would confirm for them that yes, I am as fat as I seem and therefore I am only deserving of their scorn and ridicule.  But now, it's a numerical value that simply quantifies one aspect of me, the whole me.  I can also be quantified by my I.Q., my g.p.a.,  my economic bracket, my blood pressure and my place in line at the grocery store. 

Today Sweetie left to go to Seattle for a coupla days.  Until recently, his traveling induced some pretty intense anxiety.  We were living in a relatively isolated pocket, with an alleyway behind our house that was frequented at night by making transactions that were risky and illegal.  I had been dealing with pretty intense and relatively frequent anxiety attacks in general, so being alone for a couple of days or more with (thank goodness) an alert dog in an isolated house just exacerbated my anxiety.  Thankfully, with some counseling, self love, and self awareness, the anxiety is much less frequent and much less intense before.  But I still get lonely when he's gone. 

And I am a comfort eater, oh yes I am.  So my goal over the next couple of days is to not succumb to comfort eating crap that I shouldn't be eating.  I can have snacks, yes indeed, but not pizza and peanut butter toast. 

I return victorious from the grocery store.  As soon as I decided to go back to "South Beach Living" as the dude who wrote the books likes to call it, I a) wrote a blog post about it (my first post in oh, 8 months), b) talked to Marshall a bit about my decision (he was supportive, as he usually is about my endeavors) and c) took the bus to New Seasons to stock up on food that I can and will eat on this plan.  I am loathe to call it the dreaded d-word cuz the d-word sucks and has too much baggage associated with it.  So.  What'd I get?  I got boneless, skinless chicken breasts, a piece of london broil, some canned turkey chili, assorted veggies, salad mix, new salad dressing (always a good incentive to eat salad) hummus, some pre-cooked turkey, pickles, diet ginger ale and among other things, a box of incense.  Cuz I like incense.  I also got a new toy.  It's a kit in a can of sticks and connectors to make a 3-d star thingy.  When I was a kid we had this super-cool kinetic star thing my dad built from a kit, and while this thing is probably not quite so cool, I think I'll have fun building it. 

I also ate a salad from the salad bar at New Seasons, which was yummy and healthy feeling.  My plan right now is to cool up 2 chicken breasts today in order to have them ready to eat when I am ready to eat, and perhaps I'll have some london broil within the next coupla days. 

I suppose that today is as good a day as any to go find the bathroom scale in the basement.  When I was last on the plan I immensely enjoyed the small victory of stepping on the scale every few days and have it register me as weighing a bit less than before. 

Tonight is date-night so Marshall and I are gonna head out to the Portland Art Museum later this evening in order to take in some culture and make good use of the family membership we bought last weekend. 

So, a little over a year ago, due to concern for my health, wellbeing, self-image and physical comfort, I decided to (belatedly) take a doctors advice and go on the well-known South Beach Diet.  I've spent my entire life unhappy with my body, feeling too big, unattractive, scared to participate in any sports less someone see how un-sporty I really am.  Trying to hide.  So I did the South Beach thing.  And it frickin worked.  I lost 8 pounds or so over 2 weeks, then slowed down to about a pound or so a week of loss, give or take.  I gave up beer and bread and pasta and sugar and all that jazz.  I felt better than I had in a long time, I was feeling good about my body, and as promised by the program, I wasn't hungry all the damn time cuz I wasn't riding a blood-sugar roller-coaster.  Then I went to North Carolina for a week, ate grits and bread and potatoes and fried whatever.  I told myself that I'd go back on my eating plan when I got back, and I sorta did and sorta didn't then I really didn't and well...you know how it goes.  Now I eat burgers and fries and snack on peanut butter and jelly toast at 11:30 at night.  The weight came back, plus a little more, and fucking god dammit I feel huge.  I am huge.  Luckily most of the time I don't feel too terrible about it...my self esteem is better than it has been in years.  And luckily I have a wonderful wonderful sweetie who loves me as I am and thinks I am beautiful.  And that's great, but I want to think I am beautiful too.  And today I pulled on a pair of pants, which last year, fit great, and yes, they still fit, but not well...not comfortably.  So I'm feelin it.  It's time to go back.  Once I got on it I loved it and felt great and didn't really miss things like toast and french fries and things like that...that much.  I missed the beer.  But wine is great.  So I wanna try again.  I need to try again.  I owe it to myself to try again. 

The plan is: 1st- two weeks of all-out ketosis.  Which means basically eating nothing but low-fat protein and vegetables and drinking water.  Chicken, lean steak, turkey, salads, eggs, a little cheese, tofu.  No alcohol. At all. 

Then: After two weeks, once a week, allow myself a cheat treat.  Go the the Lebanese restaurant and eat the wonderful, puffy, white flour pocket bread and lamb with white rice.  Or eat a burger and fries.  Yes, allow myself to drink alcohol, but wine only. No beer, and no hard stuff with the sugary mixers.  Yeah, I'll prolly slip some, but I can get back on track.  I can always get back on track. 

Here's the thing that I think makes it hardest.  The preparation.  I am not a terribly domestic person.  I like convenience foods, I like to go out to eat, I do NOT like to spend much time in the kitchen.  Most of the time, I find it mundane and messy.  But if I'm gonna do this, I gotta be willing to prepare some foods.  Make the fritatta thing once a week or so.  Cook chicken a few times a week.  Get snacks together.  And at school....it's nothin but the salad bar, unless I bring my own lunch.  And snacks.  Planning ahead for eating.  That's the name of the game.  Oh yeah, and my sweetie is basically vegetarian and one of the most gratifying and easy things to do on this plan is eat the meat.  Cuz my body doesn't like too much tofu.  So here I go, I'm gonna wish myself luck try to be kind and forgiving of myself, and give it a go again.